ILM POLLS THE 20TH CENTURY'S BEST TRACKS ››› YOUR RESULTS THREAD ‹‹‹

I gave two Can votes, one for 'future days' and another for 'yoo doo right'. It wont feel like an ILM poll to me if Can doesn't place. Also think 'future days' is the one that has the most chance of making it but we'll see.

full support for "yoo doo right" (long shot) and the boriginal (akkle otm)

i almost voted for circle i think. but boredoms are one of those bands i'm constantly raving about but have a hard time converting people to. i could understand if a lot of people on here don't get it.

All my Can points went to 'Oh Yeah' - I guess a Can medley might just scrape in.

lol @ SHLETER

bet kate bush is the artist with four songs

Not sure about that. 'Running up that Hill' will def. place, but what's the other one?

umm hounds of love? I may have miscounted...after some sober reflection, I realize prince will make four with when doves cry

bet kate bush is the artist with four songs

Nah. It's got to be Prince. WHen Doves Cry

Oh man, you beat me to it by a second lol.

favorite song I'm giving up on: ghost town by the specials

Hounds of Love?

But I don't think it's going to be Kate. Beatles probably. Prince/Jacko/Kraftwerk maybe.

Wichita Lineman, Gimme Shelter, Good Vibrations, Anarchy in The UK, Superstition, Dock Of The Bay

All nailed on I think, except maybe Gimme Shelter due to vote splittage.

btw the reason O Superman will be so high is that it fills a niche very few of the tracks on the ballot fill: the genuinely-out-there-but-wondrously-compelling avant-garde classic

and deservedly, although its isolation here is not to be celebrated

Stop saying "avant-garde".

"art-pop" oh idk YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN

"complex non-verse-chorus 4/4 percussive music"

OK the reason I nominated O superman was because it was a groundbreaking, fucking UNUSUAL thing to have charted so high when it came out. Wasn't it #1 at one point?

lol matt

I like to think of thousands of people buying "O Superman" as a joke or novelty record and then after a week of living with it realising how beautiful and affecting it is.

Superstition, Dock Of The Bay ... O Superman

i voted for these, and would be very surprised if they don't make the cut.

when big science came out, i bought it right away because it had "o superman" on it and i'd loved that song from the 1st second i heard it. no lag time. the rest of the album worked on me in much the way that noodle vague describes. i couldn't deal with it. it lay too far outside the musical and cultural reference points i understood. i didn't even much like it, beyond the single, but i'd dig it out every couple weeks and play it, this bizarre object, just to stare at the oddity of the sound. within a few months it had won me over entirely and i couldn't imagine i'd ever stumbled over any of it. except "sweaters", with which i once had a brief epiphany, but then it went away.

If "O Superman" can't be described as "avant-garde", I don't know what can. It doesn't follow any pop music formula, and it was originally a part of a performance piece. Jus because it sounds pretty doesn't mean it can't be avant-garde.

a) it's a frequently mis-applied term that used to have a specific historical meaning
b) avant-garde in a pop context doesn't equal avant-garde in a music context
c) Matt was joking

Prince, Beatles and Beach Boys will all get four. I thought Prince would get five, but I guess Sign O The Times is missing out.

Could a list be made out of this showing most popular bands/artists? Shouldn't be too much more work ?? Therefore artists that got lots of noms, therefore lots of vote splitting would show up.

I have this list, it's pretty interesting. I'll post it after we're done with the results.

a) it's a frequently mis-applied term that used to have a specific historical meaning

waht? "Avant-garde" has never had a definition everyone has agreed upon. It's the French word for vanguard & can be applied to any work that encroaches upon new artistic territory.

nah once Modernism is mainstream I think it's drifted a long way from its original use

crut's right to some extent, but within intellectual circles and for most of the 20th century it defined a specific realm of artistic, political and social activity. specifically, the avant-garde is that segment of bohemian art, thought and/or culture that issues a radical, progressive and in a sense violent challenge to mainstream values and aesthetics. it's the aggressive leading edge of cultural change, not just art, lifestyle or philosophy, but art, lifestyle and philosophy as an intentional assault on the crimes of normalcy. to be avant-garde in a meaningful sense is not just to be marginalized, but to willingly marginalize yourself, to insist upon your own alienation.

i mean, i've (over)stated it in the most extreme terms possible, but that sort of confrontational, disruptive stance or effect has to be in there somewhere.

b) avant-garde in a pop context doesn't equal avant-garde in a music context

Is the more pertinent point really. Also his third point as well.

b) avant-garde in a pop context doesn't equal avant-garde in a music context

What does "musical context" mean here? Anyway, "O Superman" is definitely avant-garde in a larger context than pop. It wasn't written a pop tune but as a part of larger performance that certainly counts as avant-garde.

Just no. That's like saying Serialism in 2010 is avant-garde.

that sort of confrontational, disruptive stance or effect has to be in there somewhere.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Just no. That's like saying Serialism in 2010 is avant-garde.

― absinthe of malithe (Noodle Vague), Friday, December 3, 2010 3:40 AM (1 minute ago)

Laurie Anderson was considered an avant-garde composer/musician in the 1980s when this song came out ... having crazy pills moment

Could a list be made out of this showing most popular bands/artists? Shouldn't be too much more work ?? Therefore artists that got lots of noms, therefore lots of vote splitting would show up.

Be good to see this list with only one vote per person counting for each band, or else the results will be distorted by the people that voted for every track by that one band to make sure they placed.

^ no sorry those two chuck berry songs are better than anything else I could have voted for

Not sure the concept of the avant-garde was particularly relevant by 1980, certainly not in musical terms.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha oh superman

I see where you're coming from, but...

Not sure the concept of the avant-garde was particularly relevant by 1980, certainly not in musical terms.

― Matt DC, Friday, December 3, 2010 3:47 AM (1 minute ago)

yes, it was.

i can't think of anyone who's producing what i'd call avant-garde pop at this point. music yes, but not pop. i mean, i'm sure something like it exists somewhere, but i'm just not tuned into those wavelengths. in any genre, the most extreme and progressive fringes might casually be called avant-garde, so long as their formal structures haven't ossified into genre, but it's hard to square that kind of antagonism with "pop". there's a basic conceptual contradiction, in that what is generally popular by definition cannot for long be truly avant-garde, and vice-versa. anyway, the phrase typically describes music that resembles or borrows from familiar popular forms but utilizes them in challenging, artistically intriguing and novel ways. for instance, as integrated with performance art practice, like "o superman".

i get the ha ha ha thing, crut, but you know, sliding scales...

Avant garde is such a pointless term because it requires an exaggerated form of radicalism and lack of compromise. A lot of arty pop was still being made in the early 80s though, and is still being made today.

yeah, but that's where we started, with people wanting to distinguish between pop that might seem trivially arty to some and the "real avant-garde" or whatever

There is no such thing as "trivially" arty though. The best art in music is always a result of compromise, from Bach and Mozart to this day.

xxxxxp

Laurie Anderson was considered an avant-garde composer/musician in the 1980s when this song came out ...

This is kind of in the same way that Damien Hirst does "modern art" - it's after a serious rupture that distinguishes things as "classic" and "modern/avant-garde" in popular consciousness, but it doesn't belong to that rupture. The fusion of high and low culture in ~1980 New York was important and new, and O Superman led to wider awareness of what could be done with electronic music, but it didn't change how people thought in a significant way. IMO.

This is kind of in the same way that Damien Hirst does "modern art" - it's after a serious rupture that distinguishes things as "classic" and "modern/avant-garde" in popular consciousness, but it doesn't belong to that rupture. The fusion of high and low culture in ~1980 New York was important and new, and O Superman led to wider awareness of what could be done with electronic music, but it didn't change how people thought in a significant way. IMO.

Exactly.

There is no such thing as "trivially" arty though. The best art in music is always a result of compromise, from Bach and Mozart to this day.

― You're Twistin' My Melody Man! (Geir Hongro), Friday, December 3, 2010 3:58 AM (38 seconds ago) Bookmark

sure, but everybody dismisses the art they don't like (not to point fingers or anything...)

Doesn't change the fact that O Superman is awesome and I hope it turns up soon.

uh, who's talking about changing the way people thought about anything? That is what she and a number of her contemporaries were called back in the 70s/80s -- they were referred to as avant-garde composers/musicians.

Yes but this whole argument is about the point at which bandying a term like "avant-garde" becomes devalued and redundant and useless. Lots of stuff gets called "experimental" without actually being so.

XX Post "Oh Superman" is indeed quite annoying. Kind of interesting for the first two minutes, then repetitive and boring and pointless.